Martin Stott is a closet singer. He's a Marvin Gay trapped in an Anglo skin. And, even though it seemed totally anti-intuitive to send a stiff upper lip British fellow who can't even sing God Save the Queen on key to join in the wild, free gospel music of Harlem, we knew it was the perfect experiment. If music supposedly brings disparate people together, this was our chance to prove it. So, Martin traveled to Harlem to see if he could possibly get into the gospel groove...but a little bit of personal history was holding him back...

Harlem Gospel Tour

By Martin Stott, 8/24/2001

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You've got to realise you're asking me to do something that's emotionally difficult here. Let me share my tragic past. When I was a kid I used to love singing. At the age of 8 I joined our school's prestigious choir. One day during rehearsals the teacher suddenly shouted - "somebody's flat". She split us into four groups. The first group sang - no-one there, then the second, third and finally my group. I knew it wasn't me, I sang my little heart out. It's you screamed the teacher. And this great big nobbly finger was pointing at me. I was made to leave the room and join the great unwashed, unmusical children doing craftwork next door. Since then I've had a terrible hangup about singing in public. So I'm going to have to build up to this.

It's a rainy Saturday afternoon and I've stumbled into a tiny little side-street church where America's most unusual gospel choir is warming up. They're all Japanese. On the organ is a great huge black pastor, Terrence Kennedy. Before they start singing properly he gives newcomers a potted history of black gospel music. He says gospel means good news and gospel music's origins are in the negro spiritual.

They sang that pain using Anglo-American melodies and words, but with an African passion and rhythm. A rhythm I fear I may struggle to get.

Afterwards, I spoke to Yuko Ichioka and asked her what attracted her to black gospel music. She says it was going to a church on a gospel tour.

Yuko: "I was so impressed and inspired by those singers who were really singing out and so loud. To me it was like a crying out. Some people I saw crying. Some people get so emotional through singing. All I heard about was hope and joy and I really got interested in singing in a choir like them."

I tag along behind one of the dozens of tour parties visiting Harlem for the morning and we go into church. What follows is one of the most interesting experiences of my life.

Inside the Shiloh Baptist church the upper balcony is packed with dozens of sweaty white visitors fanning themselves. I've been in Harlem a few days and become acclimatised to the fact that most people here are black. To see so many whites, together, is actually a culture shock. They're here for the same thing as me. Rousing harmonies, discords, free style solos and pews that rock to the rhythm of praise.

But then the strangest thing happens. After an hour - they suddenly all get up and quietly shuffle out with the service still going on around them. Outside their tour busses are waiting to return them to their downtown hotels. It seems really rude to drop in on someone's worship and not actually stay to the end. That would mean another two hours. But boy what a two hours.

With the tourists gone it's almost as if the real praise can now begin. The music just gets better and better.

And then there's the sermon, an incredible 30 minutes of rapid, repetitive, rhythmical ranting that reaches a musical crescendo.

Throughout, the congregation clap and shout hallelujah. Some are in tears. I want to become part of it, to share in the emotion and I try to join in - but something holds me back. All I can manage is a bit of fumbled clapping and some embarrassed shuffling from one foot to the other. If I'm to join a choir I'll have to overcome this reticence.

I meet Tim Rawlins at the Memorial Baptist church choir practise. He's rare proof of the fact that white men can sing gospel. He says I've got to surrender to the music - feel it - and forget I'm English.

Tim: "What I like about gospel music, is that it breaks from that old European tradition which separates intellect and reason from feeling and really in Gospel music you feel with great thought and you think with great feeling..."

That probably means loosening up physically too. When the elderly women start to practice I find myself entranced watching the soloist, Lonnie Gray. She's 77 years old but she's out there, her face enraptured, her hips swaying, moving with the rhythm - feeling it.

Lonnie: "Once I hear a good note, it just grabs me, you can't keep still, it's just one of those things. It just gets into the bloodstream. Even if you don't know it it's the sounding of it that touches you you know. So you dance? Well I get happy now and then, every now and then. Laugh. Every now and then I get happy, very happy!"

Sitting in the empty pew listening to Lonny and her friends I can't help getting happy too - I find myself swaying. I think I must be ready to go up the road for my audition.

It goes like this...

Charles Wilson is musical director at Beulah Baptist Church. He looks just like Lionel Ritchie. He teaches me a song

Needless to say I make a dog's dinner of it...Limp start or what.

but when we sing together it gets easier...The audition turns to a lesson but at the end Charles pronounces me cured of my childhood ailment of tone deafness.

So I can sing - not well, but well enough for Charles to let me join his choir for rehearsal later that evening and we end up having a really good night singing....

I wanted to stay in Harlem to sing with the choir the following Sunday - Charles said he'd let me, but I haven't got long to stay here either. Tomorrow it's time for me to steal away home, leaving my musical aspirations behind me, along - I'm pleased to say - with my hangups! From Harlem, this is Martin Stott, for the Savvy Traveler.